Istanbul Calling: Hip-Hop in the Melting Pot

It could be argued that no musical culture has ever had an impact or affected influence over the world like hip-hop has. Rock and pop culture will always be synonymous, bridging the gap between entertainment and cultural fashion, but with hip-hop comes a sort of cultural ethic. Hip-hop hasn’t just reinvented and redefined the perimeters of pop culture, it’s moved beyond the small pockets of urban culture from whence it came more than 30 years ago to find life outside the cityscapes it was defined by.

In the last three decades, hip-hop in the US has been fragmented into a myriad of subgenres, its sound usually characterized geographically (East Coast, West Coast, Dirty South) or by era (Golden Age, Old-school). Not too often are Western listeners acquainted with the new dimensions hip-hop takes on once it leaves their shores, and many are even less acquainted with the fact that the music and its culture have even left their shores.

Hip-hop, in fact, has found its way to just about every conceivable place on Earth, stretching from the zenith-point of northern hemispheres such as Greenland to such unobvious travel destinations such as the Solomon Islands. Many countries have found some way to assimilate hip-hop into their subcultures, and the results are usually nothing short of remarkable even if their efforts of cultural (re)invention go unnoticed by most of the Western world. Turkey, a country that straddles a precarious line between the East and the West, has had one of the most exciting and difficult inceptions of hip-hop culture in the last 20 years of the music’s growth. Brimming with a sense of invention and a passion that runs deep and pure, Turkey has at once embraced and rejected hip-hop in a constant bid to assert an identity both separate and united from the rest of Europe, of which part of its country shares its geography.

Though hip-hop has spread throughout the country, laying down roots in cities like Izmir, Bursa and the capital, Ankara, Istanbul is where most of the action is situated. Istanbul, known as one of the world’s biggest and most dynamic cultural melting pots, is home to roughly 14 million people and most of Turkey’s rappers can be found there, where the hip-hop scene has grown considerably in the last decade or so. “We had a great movement for the last ten years,” says rapper Rahdan Vandal. “Most of the different styles were created by second generation MCs. Turkish MCs are trying to improve themselves lyrically and technically day by day. We still have some differences between American and European MCs.”

Turkish hip-hop can be unofficially divided into two separate camps: Emotional rap and Battle rap. Emotional rap pretty much entails what its label suggests; it favours a softer, more contemplative tone and in most cases, covers such topics like love and loneliness. Often, it features influences of arabesque, a Turkish music heavily informed by Arabic/Middle Eastern sounds that rose to popularity during the ‘70s and has since continued to be a staple music with the Turkish public. The beats are rather uncomplicated, not especially disturbed by any sense of invention or any other element outside of hip-hop.

Emotional rap’s current champion is Sagopa Kajmer (though Kajmer’s work has also explored hip-hop of the harder, more aggressive variety, as well). He is currently one of Turkey’s most successful rappers. At times, his songs take on political themes, which is not entirely typical of the subgenre, and his views on life are often pessimistic (Kajmer refers to his style of hip-hop as “pessimistic rap”). Kajmer has taken heat from some of his contemporaries for either producing music considered by some as unprogressive and insipid, or for his political-affiliations which some in Turkey have observed lean more toward religious conservatism. Despite the controversy, Kajmer still holds his position as one of the reigning kings of Turkish hip-hop (on a mainstream level) and is one the most easily recognizable figures on the scene.

On the other end of the spectrum, there is Battle rap, a subgenre of Turkish rap (unofficially) that forgoes the contemplative nature of Emotional rap for intense rhymes and harder beats modelled after the sounds of American gangsta rap and turntablism. In this corner, you have Fuat, one of Battle rap’s more prominent figureheads, who has somewhat been positioned as Kajmer’s rival. Fuat, a German-Turk from Berlin, would begin his lessons in hip-hop, recording tracks at the start of the ‘90s and exploring the various dimensions of expression that the music had to offer.

“It started in 1988 in Turkey, in my home town Şile,” Fuat explains, “A friend of mine came from Munich with vinyl and tapes (Ice T, Run DMC, etc.) and infected me with hip-hop. After the Berlin wall came down, I moved back to Berlin and developed my knowledge of rap there. I learned everything about it in Berlin.” Fuat’s history of his hip-hop learning curve pretty much tells the story of where Turkish hip-hop really began; it ironically found its legs in Germany, flourishing in small pockets among the contingent of Turkish immigrants who had discovered and accepted the music for the extraordinary interactive tool that it could be.

Cartel could be argued as Turkish hip-hop’s first commercial act to affect some influence over the hip-hop scene in both Turkey and Germany alike. Cartel gained notoriety first on the margins of Germany’s pop scene. The band’s sound caught the attention of the German music press, which found their brand of ethnically-infused hip-hop with party atmospherics to be an exotic antidote to the usual fare of German pop dominating the airwaves. In fact, Cartel would be partly responsible for laying down the seeds for a future generation of rappers to emerge out of Istanbul a decade later.

Other bands like Makale, Turkish rappers from Switzerland who would gain popularity in Germany as well, picked up the torch and further developed the sounds Cartel previously explored, capitalizing on the traditional Turkish ethnic elements. “We use a lot of Turkish music instruments and we have many oriental influences in our music,” says rapper Casus, one-third of Makale. “We come from a music culture that embraces a big part of the world, so we use these instruments that we really feel. As for the lyrics, I have rapped in German for some projects but that’s not my intensity. I feel the Turkish language a lot more and, for me, Turkish has a deepness that I can put into my lyrics. Makale is a Turkish rap crew that lives in Basel, Switzerland, but we’ve never had any problems in this case (communicating with those who don’t speak Turkish) – you can still feel the music without understanding the lyrics.”

Both Cartel and Makale experienced a good deal of success in the very small pockets of audiences who were tuned into hip-hop in Turkey. Suddenly, the idea of this far-away foreign music seemed more than just a concept in sound. And by the time Fuat left Berlin for Istanbul, where he took up permanent residency, the deal was sealed. “If there are quality MCs in Turkish rap, this is because of one man: Fuat”, says fellow rapper Saian. “All dope MCs respect him as a master; if you talk with one of the top MCs in Turkey, he is going to say the same things about him. Fuat is a legend for Turkish hip-hop. What MC Solaar is for French rap or Rakim is for US rap, Fuat is ours.”

Da Poet, who comes from the Battle rap offshoot of Turkish hip-hop, is one of Turkey’s most celebrated and respected rappers. The young rapper grew up with hip-hop culture shaping and defining his formative childhood years, winning battle MC competitions before moving on to cutting records as early as 16 years old. His brand of hip-hop is as forward-thinking and cutting-edge as it is rooted in the nostalgia of old-school rap and turntablism.

“I discovered hip-hop when I was in secondary school,” Da Poet says. “My cousins, who live in Germany, brought some cassettes which contained old-school rap and reggae on it. Afterwards, me and my friends spent a lot of time doing graffiti and listening to this music, trying to meet as many people as possible at hip-hop parties. It was a new exciting movement for a young student in Turkey and it helped to give us an identity. Our graffiti crew improved daily and then sometime later I started rapping and producing beats. I eventually dropped graffiti and rap became my main priority and it still is today.”

After a series of indie-albums that favoured the hard-hitting beats inspired by such hip-hop acts like Wu-Tang Clan and Nas, Da Poet shifted his focus, both musically and lyrically, on his most mature and stylistically developed effort, 2011’s Poetika. The album still featured the heavy, bare-boned, robust beats that the rapper is known for, but this time they were saturated in a moody, noirish atmosphere that pointed toward more varied influences outside the hip-hop spectrum – namely, dubstep and IDM.

Between the two poles of Emotional and Battle rap exists an interstitial area where a few Turkish rappers find themselves in. Such is the case with Vardar, a relatively new rapper on the Turkish hip-hop scene. Vardar’s music presents somewhat of an anomaly in Turkish rap. His neon-pop-splashed hip-hop attacks the genre from a completely different angle than the music of his contemporaries. Having released a low-key underground indie-album in 2008, Vardar’s proper commercial follow-up, 2012’s Kötü Adam, adopted an inverse approach to making hip-hop, working his way in from the outside and employing producers not normally associated with hip-hop to make a hip-hop album. The resulting effort was a lively mix of hook-laden pop and cool, glossy electronica appropriating block-party hip-hop beats.

“I don’t have any friends who listen to hip-hop,” Vardar says, “so I try to make my music appealing to everyone, not only the hip-hop crowd. Actually it’s harder to do because neither hip-hop listeners nor the others accept me completely. Secondly, nobody I work with is normally involved in hip-hop. They are all great musicians but as they are not rappers, the music they produce has their own sounds and influences, as well.” Apart from his sound, Vardar has also taken strides to disassociate himself from the rest of the Turkish hip-hop scene by not styling himself in the usual hip-hop-affiliated wear favoured by his fellow rappers. “I have problems with authority and I don’t want to be a part of any group,” he explains. “I had to wear a tie while I was in school, though I tried not to as much as I could. If wearing loose and large clothing is the uniform of hip-hop, I’m showing my middle finger to hip-hop school’s headmaster.”

Fecr-i Ati, another noteworthy contender in Turkey’s hip-hop realm, has also set himself apart from the two polarizing subgenres of Emotional and Battle rap, ironically, by experimenting with both.
His music is characterized by the influences of his classical Turkish music training, which heavily informs his R&B-based beats. Fecr-i Ati, who has studied and plays such classical Turkish instruments like the bağlama guitar and the darabuka (hand drum), pulls from both poles of Emotional and Battle rap, fusing the soft and hard elements of either subgenre to create a seamless stretch of accessible hip-hop within the wide perimeters of pop music. While he hasn’t gained the notoriety of some of his far more prolific contemporaries, Fecr-i Ati’s music demonstrates his panache and skill for exploring hip-hop’s machismo through the use of softer, more meditative elements of traditional ethnic music.

One of the bigger challenges facing Turkish hip-hop is simply the lack of funds to produce solid, quality albums. In the early years of Turkish hip-hop, many studios were run by in-house producers who had experience in producing Turkish pop music, but little to no knowledge of what hip-hop even was. Having an in-house producer in Turkey cut a hip-hop record in the early years of the scene was like having someone who normally produced records by Nana Mouskouri trying to cut a Wu-Tang Clan album. “About seventy percent of Turkish hip-hop is produced by in-house producers,” says rapper Ados, “We don’t get any support from the labels and that is the main reason behind in-house production on hip-hop albums. So we have to create opportunities by ourselves.”

Ados, yet another rapper to come out of the growing scene, has made his mark with some rather unusual albums that bear his distinctive stamp as a vocalist in Turkish hip-hop. Ados’ raps have a certain musical tonality, which he multi-tracks into a rousing chorus of strangely brusque, Motown-esque battle cries. His music has caught on with Turkish audiences in a big way. But like his contemporaries, Ados’ troubles come down to working on a minimum budget with little or no label support. “Most of us are students in university; we don’t have time to work and make money,” he says, “Also, the taxation on everything that goes into making an album is really high in Turkey. That’s why for all the equipment we purchase, we have to save up to three times the money than the artists over in the States do.”

Technology like MPC samplers (a drum machine popularly used in hip-hop music) has become essential in allowing a Turkish hip-hop artist to develop a personal sound and style, affording him or her some control over shaping an identity in the hip-hop community. In this way, an artist is now liberated from the constraints of a less-than-knowledgeable in-house producer and is free to explore the many musical influences overseas that were either oblivious to record companies in Turkey or just plain misunderstood. Hip-hop production crews like PMC and Batarya have essentially become the nucleus of the movement, providing the funding, production and facilities for rappers who are trying to make it in an industry and country which has pretty much shunned hip-hop. “Batarya is a group of Turkish rappers who have production capabilities,” says Leşker Asakir, a member of Batarya, “Each member of Batarya has skills in production. Our every project is produced and handled by ourselves—beats, lyrics, recording, mixing, mastering, video clips, publishing and distributing. All of this is made without having a recording label or a producer (outside of ourselves).”

Da Poet, who is also a member of Turkish hip-hop production crew PMC, signed on to a record company in Turkey for Poetika, but expresses the frustrations that arise with major-label contracts, particularly when it comes to distribution: “My label didn’t have an offer with foreign sites, selling my CDs. Also, for whatever reason, there were problems and my label cancelled my digital distributions,” he explains. “Record-labels are totally fucked up in Turkey. I made a lot of mistakes when releasing Poetika, but in the future when I finish work on my next album, I won’t.” The hold of Turkish record companies over hip-hop artists, however, is still strong as it provides artists with some visibility that the underground scene may not be able to afford its artists. “We still need these labels,” Da Poet elaborates. “It’s kind of expensive to start your own company and difficult. The internet, however, is helping to eradicate the old-fashioned ways of music labels – which is a big hope for future artists.”

Imran Khan is a writer who lives in Canada. In addition to PopMatters, he has also written for other publications like Inside Entertainment, aRUDE and The Toronto Quarterly.